As pretty much anyone who has seen Black Panther will tell you, Wakanda is amazing. The beautiful, technologically-advanced African nation looks like it would be an incredible vacation destination, except for one small detail: Wakanda is a fictional place. It doesn’t really exist in the real world.
However, that hasn’t stopped people from trying to get there.
Hotel booking sites have reported a rise in searches for Wakanda since the film’s release last month, noting that Hotelscan.com has seen a 620% increase in people finding the page for Wisconsin Wakanda Water Park, while Hotels.com reported that searches for Wakanda Park are up 55% in the last two months.
All of the search increases coincide with the release of Black Panther, which was released in February 2018.
But it’s not just a water park that’s getting searched. Hotels.com noted that places around the world with similar names to Wakanda have seen increases in traffic as well, specifically Wauconda, Illinois (its name is pronounced the same way as Wakanda). That city has seen a 25% increase while Makanda, another town in Illinois saw a 40% spike.
Furthermore, Wakaya, a town in Fiji was up over 23.5% and Wakkanai in Japan enjoyed a more than 55% year-on-year uplift..
This elevated interest in Wakanda might go on for the foreseeable future as Black Panther continues to dominate at the box office with over $1 billion sales, and is expected to take then number one spot for the fifth weekend in a row this weekend.
Well, well.. a real life Wakanda does sound like an extremely cool place to visit. Here’s to hoping that our Marvel-lous dream will come true sometime in the future!
